This blog began as a description of our life in Al Ain, UAE (United Arab Emirates). Brn worked at the UAE University Libraries Deanship for three years and Bss homeschooled our four children, D, B, P, and O. After returning to the the USA for five years, we are living in Abu Dhabi now.

2006/07/24

Car Fires

Lieutenant-Colonel Ibrahim Obaid Sultan Al Nuaimi, acting director general of Dubai Civil Defence, said drivers in almost all these fires did not survive and were burnt to death.

So in Dubai more than half of car fires kill the drivers? Since there were 155 car fires last year, that would make at least 78 deaths. That seems wildly disproportionate. A quick Google search, I found that for 2004, the official US stats were more than 266,500 car fires and only 520 deaths. Now this page claims that 500 to 1,000 more deaths are not reported. Even if the 1,000 figure is true, then there are 1,500 deaths from 266,500+ fires, which would mean that in the US only 0.5% of fires were fatal. Also, if the US had 1,500 deaths from fires and only Dubai had 78, then Dubai has 1/20th of the number of deaths of the entire US. I'll bet that there are more than 20 times the number of cars in entire US than Dubai.

It also seems like we need to know how the number of cars in Dubai has increased over the last four years. If the number of cars has roughly doubled, then the number of car fires isn't really "on the rise", is it?